The Old-Fashioned Way

Old Sam Higgins sat across the street from a stately old mansion in his 1977 Olds Cutlass. The mansion stood in the center of the block surrounded by an old iron fence. The gate to the driveway stood open. A 2004 Subaru LL Bean Edition Outback wagon sat in front of the garage. “Probably belongs to the help.”

Thirty odd years ago, a younger Sam Higgins had helped to install a safe in the basement. He had always meant to come back later and crack it open, but he hadn’t built up the courage. Circumstances had forced him to flee the city and seek a life of near solitude. He had worked on a farm, living in an old house with no modern conveniences. It had been a month since his decision to retire from the country life. Now that he was back in the city, he thought it was time to take a shot at cracking that safe.

The old hotel that Sam had taken a room in still had rotary-dial desk phones in their rooms. Everything was pretty much the way he remembered it. An hour ago, he had gathered up his tools and placed them into his sack, making sure that he had everything he might need to get inside and crack open the safe. He dropped the sack into the back seat of his Cutlass and waited for all the lights to go out. Once the lights were all doused, he made his way to the back of the house, where he cut the power and phone lines. He didn’t want to risk someone disturbing him while he was working.

Because people often were careless enough to leave their back doors unlocked, Sam tried the door. The current resident of the house had locked all the doors and windows. After trying unsuccessfully to pick both locks on the back door, he searched for another way into the house. He made his way to the front porch and moved along the side deck toward the back. After examining the doors and windows along the side porch, he decided that the window locks would be easier to open. He removed a flat metal shim from his bag and slowly pushed the window lock open. Following climbing in through the window, Sam made his way to the basement.

When the power went off, an alarm sounded in a second-floor suite. Lorraine, the occupant of the suite, roused by the alarm screeching in the room outside her bedroom door, slipped out of bed and grabbed her fully-charged cell phone off the nightstand. She pulled the chain on the table lamp and noticed that it didn’t light up. She used the light on her phone to find her way to the wall switch. Flicking the switch didn’t turn on the overhead light.

Lorraine opened her door and walked over to her desk to silence the alarm. She pressed the reset button on the power supply to her desktop computer. Sitting in the office chair, she dialed the number of the power company to ask about an outage. They advised her to check the fuses. In the basement, Sam had set out his tools and was busy preparing to crack the safe.

Lorraine put on a pair of slippers and trudged down the stairs. When she opened the basement door, she saw the faint outline of a man sitting in front of a safe. She turned on her camera and quickly took a few pictures before closing the door and hurrying back upstairs to her room. Sam noticed some sudden flashes of light and turned toward the stairs. He aimed his flashlight up toward the basement door. There was no one there. He shrugged his shoulders and went to work on the safe.

Lorraine was busy dialing 911. “I think there’s a robber in my house. He’s working on an old office safe in the basement. The power is out, but I can meet you downstairs. Hurry, please.” She paused while the operator asked a few questions. “I’m in my bedroom on the second floor. I don’t think he knows that I’m awake.” She listened while the operator asked her to confirm her location. “Yes, that’s right. I’ll be downstairs waiting.”

Sam had just finished sinking the last tumbler when the police arrived to arrest him. As they dragged him away, he noticed that the safe was empty. At the top of the stairs, his eyes met Lorraine’s. The old woman shook her head. “All that hard work for nothing. If you’d have asked me, I could have told you the safe was empty. I tried to sell it, but nobody wants an old safe like that. The new ones are all electronic with timers and special keys and whatnot.”

“But how did the police get here so fast? I cut the phone line when I cut the power. There’s no way you could have called without leaving the house. It should have taken you a long time.”

Lorraine dug her cell phone out of her pocket. “I called them on this.” She opened the silver rectangle into a longer rectangle with a screen and a number pad and showed it to him. “Got Emergency Services on speed-dial and the phone has GPS tracking. I may be old, but I’m not old-fashioned.”